


A Perfect Storm (in a Teacup)

by cicak



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Coitus Interruptus, Defilement of the Roman Baths, M/M, Outdoor Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:58:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus Flavius Aquila is not an exhibitionist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Perfect Storm (in a Teacup)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Giddygeek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giddygeek/gifts).



One of the first things Marcus learned in the army was that adrenaline made fools of all men. There were other lessons, learned by rote: how to handle a sword, how to not piss off your superiors, how to be a good soldier, how to be a good representative of Rome, but unofficial lesson number one was to learn which parts of you are real, and guard them carefully, because one day you might need to learn the difference.

On top of these there were the secret lessons, learned less at the knee than on his knees, in the back of scrupulously clean quarters after filthy battles, where his face burned at the memory of what happened for long after the burn in his throat faded. Another lesson was that kisses between men were acceptable if they were soaked in wine or blood or the aftermath of either.. It was certainly Marcus’ experience that after coming off an intense shift it was easy to give into the temptation of the arms of a compatriot and kiss the adrenaline away, to grip and fight and lose his sorrow and emotion in another’s mouth. Sometimes it went further, when he wanted it to, but never quite far enough when it had to be secret and hidden away. Army life gave little impression of what courtship and marriage in the civilian world involved, but the kisses of women who followed the camps were negotiated or taken as tribute, rather than freely given, and feeling sickened after witnessing compatriots ripping kisses from the mouths of whores, Marcus resolutely stuck to men and easy excuses and the secret feeling that lived in his chest.

A poet had said that there were no lovers in the army, but poets wrote of kissing a thousand times the one you love, walking a thousand miles, sacrificing every scrap of your honour so that your beloved would remain safe. It always seemed that to love meant everything on such an impossible scale that it become meaningless, token. Marcus is a man very much settled in the realm of the real.

Nevertheless, Marcus has got through bad times by imagining his armour lay over his bones, a miniature chest plate over his fleshy hearty and a helmet within his skull to protect his thoughts and stop them spilling out. His tongue was a sheathed weapon, barbed and only to be used in desperate times, as a final act of self-defence. Most of all, Marcus learned how to keep himself secret when surrounded by a legion, that if you never spoke a secret, it could never be taken away from you.

Marcus and Esca’s life post the trip to the north was sickeningly similar to before. Marcus’ health was worse than it ever had been, even than when he had first arrived in Calleva, his leg too hot to touch while the rest of him shook so violently it seemed the bed would fall apart under him. The doctors his Uncle called shook their heads in front of him, thinking him lost; their voices cutting through his insensate mind. He would lose the leg, they said, if he did not die by morning. Make him comfortable. Say your last goodbyes. They comforted Marcus’ uncle with platitudes – ‘He has sacrificed it all to restore his honour, is there not a better Roman way to die?’

That night, when he was at his worst, Esca came into his room, ordered all the slaves away and climbed into his bed and whispered things into his neck, things a fever cannot understand but what felt like promises, things that had echoes of cool Caledonian water and a desperate need to stay alive. With another body in bed with him Marcus felt too hot, too hot to live, and then like the snapping of a rope, cooled, like plunging into water. Like finally waking up.  
Since returning so ill and no longer being enslaved to him, Marcus and Esca had barely seen each other. As he came back to himself, Marcus knew things were changing; the unnamed, secret feeling that he thought could only collect in the crevices in the heart in a battlefield now filled larger areas. Esca had taken back his old job of tending to his leg, insisting, with barbed smiles that he was more than happy to take it on, to help out his old master. Marcus began to read insane things into the touch of a hand, wrote entire treatises on the changing of dressings, and found poetry the way Esca stroked firmly down his back. He read defiance, fondness, fidelity and the odd feeling of pressure, akin to that when the seasons are changing, with every glance held too long.

The doctors proclaimed Marcus’ recovery miraculous and infinitely lucky. They studied his wound as if it was a trick, that he would die in front of them if they just examined him enough. It was all Marcus could do to smile and compliment their fine care, and listen to their expectant hopes that he wouldn’t relapse and die as they predicted. When, weeks later, Marcus walked for the first time unaided by man or prop, it was towards Esca, and when he stumbled, Esca was there, catching him with careful hands around his cheeks, and the subsequent delighted kiss felt as natural as the sky itself.

Marcus would have given anything to take Esca into his bed right then, to bend over for him and scream his name into the rafters but his leg’s failure from under him meant other slaves had to be summoned to move him without further injury. Had Esca still been his body slave rather than his ‘esteemed guest’ (as his Uncle put it with barbed sarcasm), they could have been alone, and Esca could have laid him on the bed carefully and done everything he craved, but the number of slaves who streamed in and out of his presence every day , interrupting every tiny moment of significance was infuriating.

At times it felt like it was the worst kept secret in the whole of Britain, but it was one they still had to keep, until Marcus was stronger. Where Marcus had spent his time in the army keeping a phalanx of secrets so quiet he could barely acknowledge them in his own head, Esca rebelled, was noisy and irritable when Marcus batted his hands away or visibly jumped when a slave entered the room,. Marcus’ secret feeling grew and he felt he would never properly relieve the awful pressure with stolen strokes in the silence of night.

The first time Esca takes him, they are in town. There had been a feast, and the wine had been good and plentiful, Roman wine for once, not the vinegar the British struggled to make. The night is warm for late spring, and Esca suggests a short cut to save Marcus’ leg that is anything but, and in the warren of the back streets he pauses on a corner and smiles at Marcus with lowered eyes and one hip cocked. He looks beguiling, like a custom temptation from the gods themselves, and normally Marcus would diffuse the situation and insist on going home, dreading the possibility of they’re being watched and the secret known but the whole thing seems oddly serious, and so he follows Esca into the alley and despite all the hesitations that linger in his bones, gladly gives himself into it.  
Esca frantically pulls him out of his clothes, lingering and undulating over him, all the while whispering beautiful things between luscious kisses ‘I wish I could take my time with you, I wish to climb you, I wish to be inside you, I wish to never let you go, I wish you to be mine until the stars fall from the sky, I wish to forsake all others but for you, I wish for your body to be my fire, I wish that the only time I cannot see you would be when I close my eyes.’

And Marcus unsheathes his dangerous tongue and whispers back ‘yes’ to every one.

For all the romance of their first time, Marcus remains wound tight, terrified that they would get caught and gets an abrasion on his face from the rough brickwork for his trouble. Esca is glorious though, every single thrust perfectly placed to drive Marcus mad and partly out of his head, so that by the end he had temporarily forgotten that they are behind houses in a densely populated town. When they move to leave the alleyway, Marcus sees a prostitute at the other end of the alley watching them with curiosity. She blows him a kiss. He almost implodes with the humiliation of it all.

Esca fusses over the scrape to his face like it is pornography itself, tending to it more in the subsequent days than he does his leg, smiling to himself the whole time. He procured a special ointment, dabbing it on with the soft sides of his fingers rather than his bowman’s calluses. He uses those late at night, when he is licking stripes of pure pleasure into Marcus’ ear until he manages to turn Marcus’ knees coltishly weak, and then the rough skin of his hand on the head of Marcus’ cock leads Marcus to scream when he comes.  
Moments later there is a heavy thump on the wall, and Uncle Aquila yells at them in impotent rage.

Esca gives his kiss like he gives his opinions – frequently and when they are least expected (they are always welcome, though Marcus would – cannot – ever say it). He resurrects the dream of the farm, describing the open skies and the delicious sweet smell of grass at every opportunity. On a day where the British sun is hot enough that Marcus could close his eyes and delude himself he was in Rome if the smell were different, he and Esca go to town to enquire about land. A few enquiries give them the name of Paetus, a disillusioned settler on his way out who was looking to sell his farm and move to Hispania, after a quieter life.  
Peteus’ farm was small, but it had a house and a barn and when Paetus started complaining that some people had moved in half a days ride away and that it was despicable, really, that Britain was sold to honest Romans as a border-land of opportunity when it was just riddled, riddled with people, Esca squeezed Marcus’ knee hard under the table, keeping his face a perfect mask of interest as Paetus began on the topic of The Britons and Their Failings, but before he could get too into that topic Marcus countered by offering him a smile, and the promise of a large sum of money.

Pateus' desire to move on, coupled with the amount of money being offered meant that the negotiations did not go on for as long as even Marcus had expected. Feeling pleased when they were done, they decided to visit the baths.

The baths are in Calleva were huge and elaborate and mercifully quiet on days like this.. It all seemed normal until they moved to go into the laconicum and Esca leaned close and whispered, hot and lush into his ear ‘One day I will have you in every one of these rooms’.  
Its not until the frigidarium they are finally alone. They both plunge into the pool, Esca with a graceful dive and Marcus with a plunge. When they both surface it is like they are still in the warm rooms, nothing but heat between them.

Esca wraps his legs around Marcus’ hips and whispers in his ear, hot breath a delicious contrast to the coolness of the water, “Can you keep us afloat long enough?”  
With that, Esca rolls his hips, strongly and purposefully, and even though they’ve done this multiple times now Marcus nearly drowns at the thought of it all, of the strong movement of Esca’s thrust and the near-thrill of getting caught.

The act of thrusting back and sliding their cocks together was a reasonable pastiche of treading water, but as they get closer, Marcus began to sink deeper into the cool water, Esca’s face following him down to kiss him under the cool water, and Marcus comes harder than he ever has in his life.  
When he comes back up to the surface, there are many men standing around the pool, and they are promptly thrown out of the baths.

As they walked home, still dripping from the baths, Esca gave a long, deep sigh. “Marcus, I am sick of being caught. How soon can we go to Paetus’ farm?"

Uncle Aquila was sad to see them go, but the news from the bathhouse had reached him in enough detail that he did not try and dissuade them from doing so. There was little to pack, and it was within daysThe ride there was long, but uneventful. They barely touched the entire way, anticipation doing the work of wandering hands.

After they tethered the horses, they stood to survey their new domain. The grass was wet and green after the rains and stretched as far as Marcus could see in rolling, undulant waves. He turned to Esca but Esca tackled him from behind, and they rolled down the slight hill, faces finding each other and kissing frantically. When they came to a halt, Marcus tensed up, looking side to side to make sure no one was nearby. Esca put his hands on either side of his face and forced him to look him square in the eye. “There is no one here but us, Marcus,” he said firmly. “You can let go.”

He bent down and kissed him again, but sweetly this time, slow to the point where time stretched out and an eternity was comprised of the soft bite of a lower lip. Marcus unwound, fisting hands in Esca’s hair, eyes fluttering shut. They stayed like that a while, just wrapped in each other under the perfectly hot sky.  
Marcus became frantic though as relaxation and realisation ripped through him, rolling them over and kissing Esca so hard he felt their teeth grind against each other. He pulled back, pulling his shirt off, then trousers, getting as naked as he could. They both produced vials of oil from their pockets at the same time and the nervous laughter unwound them more. Settled in the cradle of Esca’s hips, Marcus opened himself as wide as he could, until his hands were batted away by Esca’s and replaced with his long fingers. They both groaned as Esca breached him, Marcus dropping his weight to his hands, face directly over Esca’s as he panted his arousal.

Just the brush of Esca’s cockhead against his hole made his own cock twitch with anticipation, the mere idea of feeling Esca inside him finally without being consumed with worry was transcendental. As he pushed slowly in, Marcus felt every inch and revelled in it, revelled every aspect of it, in the sweat of Esca’s thighs and the scrape of his body hair, the deep grunt of relief when he was seated fully inside.

This was so hurried fuck in the back streets, and so the movements were slow, a deeply pleasurable rocking like the movement of the seas. Marcus sat back, and then his eyes shot open at finding the perfect angle, his hands pulling fistfuls of grass from the ground in deep pleasure. With that, all bets were off, and Esca’s thrusting turned frantic as response to Marcus’ counterpoint, and he choked and yelled Marcus’ name as he came inside him. That feeling was what drove Marcus to his own orgasm, and his mind went blank with nothing but the thoughts of pleasure and Esca.

They part, and lie together in the wet grass.

After a while, Esca turns to him, relaxation written into every one of his limbs. “Do you want to go and look inside the house?” he asked, sleepily.  
Marcus opens his eyes into the brilliant blue of the British sky, with nothing but clouds for miles around. “Lets stay out here for a while” he says, content.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Happy Yuletide Giddygeek!  
> This has been fun to write, but oh god I will never mix Yuletide and graduate school again.


End file.
